1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to portable electronic devices and more particularly, to battery power conservation in portable electronic devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
With present day smart phones and other portable (i.e., hand held) electronic devices, minimizing battery drainage is a key design consideration, as battery life is of paramount importance to consumers. To reduce battery drainage, most portable devices enter a power save mode following a predetermined time duration in which a user input is not detected at the device. During the power save mode, the display is turned off and processing activities of the central processing unit are minimized. Some devices have various stages of power save modes in which battery consumption is progressively reduced.
A typical smart phone in use today has tens or even hundreds of software applications, commonly called “apps”, stored in the device's memory. Some of these apps are provided by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Others are downloaded by the user from external sources. An icon for each app is typically displayed on one of the device's home screens, allowing the user to rapidly launch it, whereby it runs on the device's processor and consumes battery power. Once a first app is launched and runs in the foreground by producing dominant images on the device's display, if the user switches operation to a second app, the first app may continue to perform low level background processing, such as periodically communicating with a server to receive updates. Further, some applications launch programs in the background or periodically run process or command in the background even when the terminal is in an idle or sleep mode, thus contributing to battery drainage.